


I've Done Dreadful Things

by moonlizard (agstdboi)



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Dark Academia AU, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Homophobia, I don't kill anyone that isn't dead in the series so there's that, Jeremy plays polo, Lit Major Jean, M/M, Major Character Injury, Mental Health Issues, Minor Alvarez/Laila Dermott, Minor Character Death, Minor Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard, Murder-Suicide, Past Jean Moreau/Kevin Day, Physical Abuse, Secret Society, graphic description of suicide, graphic description of violence, no beta we die like men, same old story
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:00:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27921898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agstdboi/pseuds/moonlizard
Summary: It’s a truth universally acknowledged that Jean Moreau has boys with bright eyes and sun-kissed skin for his Achilles’ heel.
Relationships: Jeremy Knox/Jean Moreau
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	I've Done Dreadful Things

**Author's Note:**

> Hi so, I've never written anything for this fandom but I thought, why not? If you have my notifications on (doubt) just please ignore this and if you're a Jerejean enthusiast, welcome, it's good to see you and I hope you like this!
> 
> Spotify Playlist can be found [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0WDn8QSpJfPxE1bTJae6Cz?si=5KGtv531SVCQaTT2B1OBmg) and you can check my twitter [here](https://twitter.com/agstdboi)

The rain pours heavily against the tall window of his dorm room, thunder rumbling in the skies for who knows how long, making Jean’s heart jump every time. It’s ridiculously fitting, the rain. _And the sky wept_ , he thinks bitterly to himself.

Jean tries, and fails, to pay attention to the book in his lap, but words seem to jump out of the yellow pages and across the room, making him dizzy as they mix up the letters and stop making sense. There’s a heaviness in the air, weighting down his shoulders where they rest back against the wooden chair.

Jean tries to blink away the fogginess in his vision, to shake the uneasiness of his breath. He wishes he could leave the room, look for somewhere where he doesn’t feel the metallic taste in the air. He knows that unfortunately this feeling will be all over campus tonight. This time he can’t run away from it. Jean rubs his face and runs his hand through his hair, trying his best to shake away the feeling of uneasiness in his bones. He doesn’t even realize he was listening for the sound of a turning doorknob until it finally echoes across the room, louder than the rain outside.

Jeremy is a loud roommate even when he’s not speaking. The silence that fills the room tonight as he moves around the room is unsettling, making Jean’s skin crawl. Jean grows tired of it after five minutes, turning around to hug his desk chair. Jeremy is already watching him, sitting at the edge of his bed with nothing but concern written all over his face. No, scratch that – there’s pity swimming in his brown eyes. He wants to roll his eyes, to tell him off for feeling sorry for Jean, that he’s not allowed to; not when Jean is still alive and breathing.

“Knock it off, Knox,” he finally finds his voice, even if it wavers as he spits of the words. Jeremy’s frown does not dissolve.

“Are you–” Jeremy starts but Jean doesn’t let him finish.

“Don’t.” He cuts him off, getting out of the chair and walking towards their bathroom. He turns on the tap and allows the cold water to wake his senses as he splashes himself with it. He feels Jeremy’s presence on his back, unwavering and imposing. So goddamn _loud_.

“Jean,” he murmurs urgently, there’s something akin to begging in his tone. Jean presses his palms against his eyes so hard he sees colors behind his eyelids. He hopes that if he presses hard enough Jeremy will disappear. Like he’s an illusion, he thinks. _No_ , his unhelpful brain supplies, _like he’s a dream_.

“I’m serious Jeremy, don’t,” Jean says, meeting his gaze through the cabinet mirror. He watches Jeremy frown again, the expression so foreign in his face. He wants to look away but can’t bring himself to. Jean knows why Jeremy won’t let this go and later he probably will be thankful for it. Right now, though, all he can do is push past him towards the bed. He doesn’t stop to shed his cream sweater or to see if Jeremy is coming after him. He finds that he can’t take the kindness swimming in the words when he next speaks.

“Okay, but if you need anything, I’m here,” and then the light switch clicks, and darkness elopes every piece of old furniture in the bedroom. Jean knows he won’t get a single blink of sleep tonight, but as the sound of Jeremy’s even breathing covers the raindrops hitting the window, he accepts his own fate.

Summer looks weird in the Academy’s campus. Edgar Allan Poe was created for autumn afternoons and winter mornings, so when the first leaves start falling from the yellowing trees, Jean feels more at home than he should in a place like this.

In the early hours of the evening as he walks past the building towards the Oscar Wilde dormitory, Jean feels a lightness in his chest that has no business being there. It’s been three months since he was taken away from Evermore and placed into a student accommodation in the campus. At this point his broken ribs have healed, most of his hair has grown back into what it was before and the bruises on his skin are nothing but faint memories.

Ever since he left Evermore, this constant feeling prickling at the back of his head, heavy against his nape had followed him everywhere. There was a whisper in his head telling him repeatedly Gordon didn’t kill himself, but he ignored it always.

He didn’t know the man, and even if he had been the one to find the body there is nothing about the death of Seth Gordon that awakened sympathy inside of him. Jeremy seemed to disagree, constantly trying to check up on him, worrying like a mother hen.

He started avoiding Jeremy after the incident. Jean found that he couldn’t take his kind and warm eyes even more than usual. So, life is now sneaking out of the room at five a.m. when he knows Jeremy is fast asleep, avoiding the cafeteria during lunch and dinner time and any shared rooms in the Oscar Wilde building. It is torture, of the best and worst kind.

Apart from the odd student in the hallways or the couples making out against the stone walls of the old buildings, campus is empty. It’s a Wednesday, meaning there’s polo game, which gives Jean room to breathe. Jeremy is part of the team, so he won’t be in his room for many hours. It’s a small break in a cruel schedule Jean set himself up for, one he needed desperately.

Jean fills his head with the sound of the crunched leaves under his Oxford shoes and the list of assignments for next week. He hopes that will be enough to keep him busy for the lonely hours to come.

Later that night Jeremy stumbles in their room, making more noise than usual. Jean stirs under his heavy duvet, mind hazy with sleep as he listens for the cursing leaving Jeremy’s lips in slurred sounds. There’s a sound of clothes being shed and some tripping in the dark before he hears the mattress in Jeremy’s bed creaking. He keeps his eyes fixed on the ceiling, waiting for the sounds of Jeremy falling asleep. When it finally comes Jean is halfway back to dreamland, eyes heavy and head light.

Sara Alvarez is a force to be reckoned. She’s all sharp edges and quick retorts, with a mind so brilliant Jean feels inadequate just from being anywhere in her vicinity most of the time. Right now, as she sits in front of Jean on the loud area of the campus library, sipping on her spiced pumpkin latte of all things and fixing the collar of her white button shirt under the red sweater she wears, while she complains about the lack of queer representation in their shared Goth literature class. Jean thinks about the dinners his family had thrown when Jean was trying to get into Edgar Allan, generations upon generations of privileged kids with more money in their trust fund than the amounted per capita of a small country. He looks at Alvarez, who braved mid October’s weather in her black and white checkered mini skirt and a thin sweater and thinks what she would say if she knew.

They’re supposed to be covering next weeks reading, but the books are open on the table, forgotten. It’s only okay because Jean enjoys Alvarez company more than most right now. She didn’t once act like he was about the break for once.

“I’m just saying,” she argues, for the third time, as if Jean had disagreed with her at any point. On the contrary, he tries to find any flaw in her arguments but comes short in every point. That doesn’t mean he thinks her ideas are anything but wishful thinking that would get her nowhere in the world, had she been anyone but Sara Alvarez. “If they had put Fanny Hill or acted like Oscar Wilde was anything but a whole ass homosexual with an agenda, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“We would be having this conversation regardless,” Jean tries to supply, knowing just that wouldn’t have been enough for her.

“I know,” she replies, pointedly. “But it would’ve been nice to have a different perspective from the old white men in their reading list.” Jean hums, unhelpful. Alvarez never needs any encouragement for her rants. He watches her curly hair move around as she continues to ramble animatedly about the perks of branching out. Before he knows, Jean is walking out the library after the end of their studying session with the ripped corner of a notebook page with three different books – none of the available here.

He offers to walk Alvarez to her next class and, after dropping her off, walks to the parking lot of his dormitory, car keys already spinning in his fingers and smile plastered on his face for the first time in weeks.

The second-hand bookstore in downtown Seneca, the closest town to Edgar Allan’s campus, is not small, but if feels crowded with the tall shelves and small hallways. Renee, the small girl in his Civil War literature class, works a few shifts here and is the solely reason Jean drags himself over every time he needs new books. He prefers this anyway, yellowed pages and hardcovers to ordering new editions online.

The bell above the door chimes as he walks in and Cheshire, the resident Persian cat, runs to greet him, circling his legs as a greeting. Renee is not far away, short bob freshly dyed, he notes.

“I was wondering if you had drowned in your assignments like the rest of those losers,” she says, but something in her smile, more gentle than usual, reads more. _I was worried_ , it means, _I’m glad you haven’t gone too_.

“More like drowned by the tsunami that is Sara Alvarez,” he snorts, handing her the ripped page with Alvarez’s neat handwriting. Renee smile widens and she takes the paper from his hands, warm fingers brushing his bitten ones.

“I’ll get right to it then,” she says as she reads the recommendations, stepping away. Jean crouches down to pet Cheshire when the cat cries for attention.

After holding the position for a while his thighs start to hurt from the strain, but he stays crouched until Renee comes back with two books in hand. He smiles up at her and rises back to a standing position, wiping his palms against one another to get rid of the fur sticking to them.

“I don’t have Nana, but I can order it and you can come and pick it up next weekend, what do you think?” she tells, him, walking towards the counter to check him out.

“That’s perfect, thanks,” he smiles, reaching for the wallet in his pocket. “That reminds me, what happened to that story you submitted?”

“Oh,” Renee says, smiling tightly. “They didn’t pick me.”

“That’s disappointing,” Jean says, apologetic. Renee waves him off, trying to conceal her own dissatisfaction behind a light grin.

“Nothing new under the sun,” she says. “A queer and feminist love story is apparently an unacceptable choice for such a stemmed competition.”

“Fuck that,” Jean snaps, with such viciousness he startles himself. “You’re amazing Renee, and that story was great. Fuck them, too, if they can’t see that.”

“Thank you,” Renee says at his outburst, looking a little less embarrassed than she did when he asked. She tries to push the conversation towards easier topics, trying to push the focus away from her. Two books and a scheduled study session later he’s walking out of the bookstore with a smile on his face. His phone chirps with a notification in his pocket, but Jean ignores it in favor of getting inside his car and turning on the heat before driving towards the campus. He clenches his hands on the sterling wheel as he passes by Castle Evermore, the residency home of the most prestigious students in Edgar Allan. You had to have meet a high criterion to be part of it: maintain a GPA of 4, have enough money to pay for its absurdly high housing fees and, most importantly, be a cis straight man.

The building is imposing by the side of the main road, surrounded by nothing but big trees with falling leaves. Jean tries not to shiver or fall back into painful memories. He fixates on the road ahead, eager to arrive soon.

There is a grand piano in the Oscar Wilde dormitory’s music room that Jean likes to play when he has too many thoughts for his own good. He fills his mind and the empty halls with a haunting melody to make the cruel smiles from his nightmares fade away. The sound of the music reverberate inside his chest and Jean allows himself to be swallowed by the melody, tugging at his heartstrings. He does it all not to think about Kevin Day and his fierce smile.

Once upon a time this would be them, sitting on a piano bench in the music room at Castle Evermore, Kevin cleaning his cuts and bruises with a steady hand and a less of a steady heart. He wasn’t one for voicing his feelings, but when he held Jean’s face in a firm grip, Jean could hear all of them. Not even the shakiness in his voice would make Jean waver.

Kevin used to tell him off for fighting Riko, in the beginning. Jean fought him over it until the end, voice hoarse and muscles giving out. He also used to say there was no way out and Jean used to believe him as if to kill away the little beam of hoping shining in his chest. It was too bright to belong in a place like Castle Evermore, so Jean believed there was no escape until the point Kevin left and a little after that while Riko tried to beat the life out of him. He remembers every punch and stab from that night, the feeling of bloody fists meeting his skin and sharp blades cutting through it.

Turns out all Kevin had to do to kill the little light beam was leave Jean behind and not look back; nothing, not even the memory of his lips against Jean’s would be enough to erase the heart-breaking feeling of being left forgotten.

Pressing his palms against his eyes and his elbows against the piano keys, Jean tries to send away memories of soft kisses and loud gasps in the backseat of his car, the stories exchanged from bloodied lips while they drove as far away from Castle Evermore as they could. It was never far enough, never where they wanted to be. Taking his fingers way from his face and placing them on the keys is harder than Jean expected it to be, but he forces himself to follow through with the action if only to distract himself from his mind wandering.

Later that night, before he gets under the blankets, he remembers to check his phone and almost jumps out of his own skin as he reads the name in the display.

**Kevin Day [05:09 p.m.]**

_We need to talk._

Jean doesn’t sleep well after that, haunted by the dark walls of Evermore and piercing green eyes.

**Author's Note:**

> Spotify Playlist: [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0WDn8QSpJfPxE1bTJae6Cz?si=5KGtv531SVCQaTT2B1OBmg)  
> Twitter: [here](https://twitter.com/agstdboi)


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